Bugs in the chook house (again)!!

[thesunflowergal]

Hi All

Just been to collect the eggs from the chook house, now I am craweling with little bugs. They are about the size of the point of a pin, and are grey colour. I treated all my birds and the house with diatomaceous earth, and that seemed to stop them for about six weeks. Does anyone know what they are please? Am I treating them in the correct way?

Thanks Nikki

[President Bartlet]

I'm no expert on this but sounds like they may be red mite, before they've fed

Size wise they are tiny and although I've read they're not meant to crawl onto us, I have heard of this happening, and then infesting houses so I'd sort this out asap.

DE seems to work for us and I add lavender heads chucked liberally into the coop and many splashes of tea tree oil and all this seems to keep them at bay, however I have no way of knowing what works best- probably the DE- the other two are herbal remedies but don't harm and may help.

[becks77]

Yes sounds Like red mite, need to dust the birds and the coup/hen house and hoover your house every where.
I had an infestation a couple of weeks ago, they followed me into my house and took up residence, but they donot survive on us so be diligent and they will go in a few days. But whilst the warm/cold weather alternating stays with us so will red mite, so I'm dusting my birds with diatomes powder about every 2 weeks till the cold weather stays!
All the best

[Thomzo]

Agreed, don't be put off by the name. Red spider mite are only red once they've fed and are full of blood, at which point they disappear off into some tiny crack in the wood and disappear. Diatomwhatsit earth is what's been recommended so spray it around liberally, especially on their perch. Apparently they're really bad this year.

Zoe

[The Riff-Raff Element]

If you've got somewhere to house the hens in the meantime, I'm told sulphur candles are very effective. I'm not sure they're strcitly organic, but they are traditional for fumigation. You'd need to stopper-up the coop as best you could.

[Somnophore]

We have used just about everything over the years,'most effective is regularly jet washing the joins inside the hen house and using the relevant products. However we got fed up and switched to a large plastic hen house from Egglu, easy to clean/jetwash out and because it's prefab plastic they don't have the same places to hide and it's easy to keep them down.